Carmack for open sourcing some of the games that used to rule my teenage world, Sakaguchi for the story behind why FF was created, also several people on GD for being awesome and helping people learn and grow.

void hurrrrrrrr() {__asm sub [ebp+4],5;}

There are ten kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

I suppose once upon a time it was John Carmack but, after working in the games industry I have come to admire anybody who makes games for a living. Wheather it is a one man indie to a huge 200+ team. There are coders out there who you have never heard of who can code circles around John Carmack and also people who suck at coding and math but still manage to dig deep and struggle through to make great games because they have a vision.

Jonathan Blow for braid, and John Carmack for Doom, Quake engine, and of course without quake engine there would be no gold source engine, and no half-life and counter-strike as it is today, no source engine, no team fortress 2 and so on

“There are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like.”― Nigel Marsh

In one sense John Skeet. He has a depth of knowledge on C# and Java that is amazing. On the other end of the scale Bill Gates, because he successfully made it out of the programmer rat race with his skills and knowledge.

I don't really have any developer heroes, but there are people who inspire me to program indirectly:

1. Steve Jobs

2. Neil DeGrasse Tyson

3. Holly Griffith

4. Bill Gates

5. Hopsin

6. Hearts Grow (a band)

None of them are programmers, but their work inspires me, and they they remind that there's nothing better than waking up every day and expressing yourself as an artist through a medium you truly love. Sometimes when I go a while without writing code, I forget how beautiful programming really is. These guys remind me that as long as I stick with doing this thing that I love, I'll be able to find that beauty over and over.

No one. Sooner or later I find out something I dislike a lot about every "developer hero" (Carmack wen't down once I read certain comments/tweets, Linus is about Open Source but not about "free as in freedom", Stallman its kinda nutty, and so on).

Gabe Newell, not for code, but because he understands the development process.

Every time I hear him talk, I am awe struck at how he thinks about how to get the most out of his talent pool.

Do you have any relevant interviews? I'm interested to hear some. I haven't heard him talk very much :/

I'd say John Carmack for 2 reasons, 1. he still writes code and inovates despite technically being able to just sit back and let someone else do it for him. 2. He has a significant impact outside his original domain with his work buildin dem rockets, which I think is just awesome.